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7:32 AM PT (jeffmd): CA Controller: If CA-25 and CA-31 weren't enough, the top-two is also causing some heartburn in the controller's race. Republican Ashley Swearengin has clinched the top slot, but Democrat John Perez is in a tough fight with Republican David Evans for the second slot. (Democrat Betty Yee is close behind in fourth, with another Democrat and a Green Party candidate siphoning off some left-leaning votes.)
Once the most recent updates are included (yes, we canvassed all 58 of California's counties), Evans' margin over Perez, by our count, is 1,439. Twelve counties have reported updated vote totals beyond those issued by the secretary of state at 5 PM PT Thursday, and the good news for Perez is that later updates have been friendlier to him than early vote counts.
For example, Perez's margin over Evans in Imperial County was 18.7 percent through yesterday, but was 21.7 percent in yesterday's update. Similarly, Perez's margin in Santa Clara has grown from 7.9 percent to 8.4 percent, thanks to an update in which Perez's margin was 12.1 percent. Overall, across all 12 county updates (which total 49,234 votes), Evans outpaced Perez by 0.8 percent. However, given that Evans had been leading Perez by 2 percent in those counties, these later updates have been better for him.
The other big question is how many ballots there are left to count, and by our estimation, there are about 930,000 to 950,000. The secretary of state's Unprocessed Ballot Report slightly overstates the ballots left in Riverside and San Diego, as those figures precede the last updated vote totals from those counties. (Riverside says 20,000; San Diego says 71,000.) Similarly, Alameda also likely has fewer than 72,000 votes outstanding, since that figure was reported Wednesday afternoon, and additional votes have been counted and reported since then.
The big question, then, is Los Angeles. More than 1 in 6 uncounted ballots are from L.A. County. Perez is absolutely stomping Evans there, and he needs those 166,000 uncounted L.A. ballots to gain ground on Evans. Interestingly, many Northern California counties are not great for Perez (since so many Democratic votes there are going to Yee). For example, Perez actually trails Evans in both Monterey and Santa Cruz, and Sonoma and Marin are not giving him the margins one might typically expect of those counties. Conversely, Perez actually leads Evans in many Republican-leaning Central Valley counties (including heavily Republican Tulare), since so many Republican votes there are going to Swearengin.
We'll have much more clarity on the situation by the end of the day Friday, since almost all counties with votes outstanding are promising updated vote totals.
8:45 AM PT: IA-Sen: Rasmussen: Joni Ernst (R): 45, Bruce Braley (D): 44 (March: 40-37 Braley).
8:47 AM PT (Darth Jeff): MD-Gov: Attorney General Doug Gansler has certainly shown some very questionable political instincts during his campaign, but he's probably correctly identified Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown's weak spot.
Gansler has another ad out where he blames Brown, who is the frontrunner in the June 24 Democratic primary, for mismanaging the state's Obamacare roll-out. The narrator throws in a quick jab at Brown for not endorsing Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary, stating, “Brown opposed Barack Obama when he first ran for president, then mismanaged Obamacare in Maryland, costing people health care.” Seems like a not-so-subtle way to try and suggest Brown is secretly anti-Obama because of his (unmentioned) support for Hillary Clinton in 2008.
Brown defends himself in a new ad, where the narrator notes all the people who have benefited from Obamacare in Maryland. The narrator also quickly hits Gansler at the beginning by insisting "Doug Gansler is attacking Obamacare," which is certainly a very creative interpretation of Gansler's ads. Brown goes completely positive in another spot, which highlights his running mate Howard County Executive Ken Ulman.
9:17 AM PT: FL Redistricting: Florida's two-week redistricting trial over the state's congressional maps has come to an end, though it could be "several weeks" before the judge who heard the case issues a decision. And any ruling is sure to get appealed, so if any modifications are made to the district lines, they won't go into effect until 2016.
10:22 AM PT: IA-Gov: Rasmussen: Terry Branstad (R-inc): 49, Jack Hatch (D): 40.
10:24 AM PT: CA-33: Well, this endorsement would have been interesting had it come a week ago, but retiring Rep. Henry Waxman is obviously backing state Sen. Ted Lieu now, since Lieu will faced Republican Evan Carr in November after the pair emerged from Tuesday's top-two primary. Lieu is the overwhelming favorite in this dark blue Los Angeles-area district that voted for Barack Obama 61-37.
10:29 AM PT (Darth Jeff): AK-Sen: The campaign advertising for this race has officially gotten meta. First, Republican former Attorney General Dan Sullivan did a spot from the the roof of the Dena'ina Civic and Convention Center in Anchorage to accuse Democratic Sen. Mark Begich of not achieving results. Then, Begich did an ad from the same place touting how he helped build the Dena'ina Center as mayor of Anchorage and poking fun at Sullivan's claims. Now, Sullivan has a response ad bringing up Begich's response ad.
Sullivan accuses Begich for "taking credit for other people's ads" and says the senator votes with Obama 97 percent of the time. Sullivan also brings up another one of Begich's ads, claiming that Begich is "pretending to ride around in snow machines." Of course, Begich actually was riding a snow machine. I really hope Begich just ends this game of ad telephone rather than producing a response ad to this response ad to another response ad.
10:54 AM PT: GA-Sen, -Gov: SurveyUSA confirms both PPP and just the general sense of the race: Jack Kingston is kicking David Perdue's ass in the GOP runoff for Senate. Kingston leads Perdue 52-41 according to SUSA; that's similar to the 46-34 margin PPP found, only it's even worse for Perdue, since Kingston is already cresting 50. The runoff isn't until July 22, so it could be a painful month-and-a-half for Perdue if he can't seriously reverse Kingston's mojo.
However, there's one possible warning sign in this poll: the general election results. SUSA puts Kingston up 43-37 on Democrat Michelle Nunn, and Perdue leads by a similar 43-38 spread, while Libertarian Amanda Swafford takes 6 percent in both matchups. These are by far the worst numbers in quite some time for Nunn, who's led in most polling and is at 46 percent in the Pollster average.
But they may not be wrong. The only other outfit to include Swafford was St. Leo, who found Nunn edging Kingston just 39-38 and trailing Perdue 41-37. So as we've seen in other states like North Carolina, the Libertarian's presence is simply reducing the overall vote share for the major parties. The issue, of course, is whom Swafford hurts more, and whether Nunn can clear 50 percent in November in spite of a third-party candidacy. If she can't, she'll face a January runoff where Republicans will likely have the upper hand.
SUSA also has numbers on the gubernatorial race, where GOP Gov. Nathan Deal leads Democratic state Sen. Jason Carter 44-38, with Libertarian Andrew Hunt at 7. That's very similar to their may results, which were Deal 43, Carter 37, and Hunt 7.
11:26 AM PT: MS-Sen: Mitch McConnell just announced that he'll host fundraiser for fellow Sen. Thad Cochran on Tuesday at NRSC headquarters in DC, along with the junior senator from Cochran's home state, Roger Wicker, and some other unnamed Republican senators. It's possible that the NRSC simply wants to stand by one of its own and keep the incumbents who fill its coffers happy by showing they'll protect folks even in deep red states. But it may also be that the GOP is genuinely afraid that a Chris McDaniel victory in the June 24 runoff will turn an easy hold into a more challenging one—an opening that Democrats are, apparently, gearing up to exploit, should they get so lucky.
11:32 AM PT: IA-Sen: Loras College: Ernst 48, Braley: 42.
IA-Gov: Loras College: Branstad: 52, Hatch 38.
11:47 AM PT: DCCC: The DCCC just added nine more candidates to its Red to Blue program and five more to its entry-level "Emerging Races" list. Four of the new R2B inclusions are in fact upgrades from the original Emerging Races roster: James Lee Witt (AR-04), Michael Eggman (CA-10), Jim Mowrer (IA-04), and Nick Casey (WV-02). The rest are races where nominations have now been resolved, or in one case, where a late-breaking opportunity emerged (Brad Ashford in NE-02). The full lists are at the link.
12:05 PM PT: NY-13: Charlie Rangel probably wishes he hadn't let this line slip out of his mouth in a recent debate with his Democratic primary opponent, state Sen. Adriano Espaillat:
"I hope somewhere during this debate, ... [Espaillat] tries to share what the heck has he done besides saying he's a Dominican?" Rangel said.
1:07 PM PT: Loras' sample very likely skews conservative, though:
Likely voter sample included only those who voted in the 2010 general election and who indicated likeliness to vote in 2014 or who have registered to vote since 2010 and indicated likeliness to vote in 2014.
If you start off by limiting yourself largely to people who voted in 2010, an epic GOP wave year, you're going to have a hard time properly approximating the 2014 electorate. (Credit to
sulthernao for the catch.)
2:14 PM PT: MT-Sen: Brand-new Republican pollster Vox Populi (Mary Cheney's firm) has some seriously gaudy numbers for GOP Rep. Steve Daines, who leads Democratic Sen. John Walsh 56-33 in a poll taken around three weeks ago. While the race hasn't been polled often, that's by far the biggest margin Daines has ever seen. What's also strange is that Vox asked respondents about "Senator Harry Reid's job performance as Senate Majority Leader" before getting to the horserace—a weird question that doesn't really have any business in a poll like this. They also made sure to ask about Obama and Walsh's job approvals, but didn't bother with Daines' favorables.
2:43 PM PT: CA-33: Here's a nice precinct-level map of the primary results, courtesy the Los Angeles Times.
3:02 PM PT: MA-Gov: A new poll from SocialSphere for the Boston Globe finds Democratic Attorney General beating 2010 GOP nominee Charlie Baker 37-32, but Baker leads state Treasurer Steve Grossman 32-26. As is typical of most polling of this race, there are lots of undecideds.
3:05 PM PT (Darth Jeff): Ads:
4:30 PM PT (Darth Jeff): CA-31: San Bernardino County added a few hundred ballots, but the needle barely moved here. Democrat Pete Aguilar's lead over Republican Leslie Gooch for the general election spot narrowed very slightly from 183 votes to 181.
About 3,900 provisional and emergency ballots are left to be counted countywide, and about a third of them are likely to be in CA-31. For Gooch to pass Aguilar, she'd need the estimated 1,300 remaining ballots to favor her over Aguilar by about a 14 point margin. This looks like a tall order.
4:37 PM PT (Darth Jeff): Gooch's campaign manager confirms she will not be conceding.
6:31 PM PT (jeffmd): SSP Labs just finished another 58-county canvass in the Controller's race, and the updated vote totals show just how much Top 2 can mess with us:
We're finding that Republican David Evans is actually in fourth place now, 7,700 votes behind Democrat Betty Yee in third, who is in turn 536 votes behind Democrat John Perez, who is in second and would advance to the general election runoff against Republican Ashley Swearengin (who leads Perez by more than 108,000 votes).
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